To simplify the teaching of the pronunciation of Chinese characters, a Chinese phonetic alphabet was promulgated in China after 1911 A.D. Typewriters have been disclosed for typing such phonetic characters on a keyboard of the type conventionally employed for typing Roman characters. Systems of this type are disclosed, for example, in Stickney U.S. Pat. No. 1,489,616, and Jones U.S. Pat. No. 1,646,407. In these systems, the phonetic characters are typed in accordance with the sounds of the Chinese words to be depicted. The phonetic symbols are not conventional Chinese characters, however, so that the reader must have a sufficient knowledge of the phonetic alphabet in order to translate the sounds they represent into a conventional Chinese language.
This Chinese phonetic alphabet is known as the Bwo Pwo Mwo Fwo system (hereinafter referred to as the BPMF), which employs fifty-seven specially formed characters that are not conventional characters of the Chinese language. The BPMF system is roughly equivalent to the ABC's in English language systems. It is taught to school children to help them learn the pronunciation of characters. BPMF is looked upon by the Chinese as a set of phonetic aids rather than as an alphabet, in the Western sense of the term. On mainland China, the BPMF system has been generally absorbed by the PINYIN system, which employs Roman or Latin alphabet characters to spell out the words. For example, the phrase "I am an American" is written in PINYIN as "wo shi mei guo ren". With PINYIN, the Chinese characters can be bypassed completely in the study, writing and communicating of Chinese. It is superior to the BPMF in the sense that it employs an alphabet of world-wide recognition, rather than a set of phonetic symbols, which tend to look like hieroglyphics to all but a student of linguistics.
It is obvious to the Chinese, as well as to any student of Chinese, that PINYIN or any other phonetic alphabet could be used in place of written Chinese characters. In fact, certain linguistic authorities feel that it is only a matter of time before PINYIN replaces characters in Chinese writing. But they feel this transition will take a considerable amount of time. ("Language and Linguistics in the People's Republic of China", edited by Winifred P. Lehmann, University of Texas Press, 1975.) (Note that modern Turkish and Vietnamese are written in the Latin Alphabet.)
In spite of the ease of writing, the use of PINYIN is not widespread in mainland China, even though it was introduced as early as 1956. If the Chinese wanted to do so, they could correspond with each other, and with non-Chinese outside of China in the Latin alphabet. Chinese in written form could be taught exclusively in PINYIN to Chinese and non-Chinese alike, and the difficult task of learning characters could be eliminated entirely. Chinese calligraphy would, however, die away.
The use of PINYIN has had limited popularity, possibly because it may be culturally impossible for the Chinese themselves to advocate the discarding of Chinese characters. The Chinese consider calligraphy an art; something beautiful to learn and to pass on to future generations. Chinese culture and civilization are inextricably tied to Chinese calligraphy. The retention of Chinese calligraphy is thus a form of cultural inertia. Movement away from Chinese calligraphy may thus be considered disloyal to the Chinese heritage.